The blog of a chug-a-long angler enjoying his life at the water side…

Session 29 – New Waters III

Oh well, due to lack of time at the moment these entries may from time to time be taking the form of just a short note of date, place, catches with some photos possibly.

So, Tuesday 23rd June, I headed to yet another new water – my new club’s premiere water, Dudmaston Hall Big Pool. Actually there are three pools fishable on site – the Big Pool itself and 2 pools called Brim and Seggy. Big Pool is primarily a tench water – no carp or bream – although there are perch, roach, rudd and pike in there. Brim and Seggy are more carp waters although they do hold tench and the other species other than bream (I think).

So, I arrived at around 0600, had a quick look at the water – spotted Des Taylor fishing from the platform on which he made his tench fishing video – and eventually settled into a swim on the west bank with a water depth of 3.5’-4.0’ feet in front of me. As usual I baited up the swim with my usual groundbait/particle/maggot mix before tackling up and setting out my station ready for action.

Tactics of the day were laying-on/lift method float fishing using my 13’ Hardy Matchmaker clone float rod, 6lb line, 4AAA driftbeater float shotted with 2 2SSG shot (plus a BB shot up line from the float per usual) and I started with a size 16 hook but later changed to a 14 and then a 12. Bait was maggot, worm or a cocktail of both.

I fished until 1600 and my catch for the day consisted of one 2lb 0oz tench (plus lost 3, 2 to hook pulls and 1 snap off), and a number of small perch, roach and rudd.

Then came the worst part of the day – the climb back up from the pool to the car park with the loaded barrow. A few hundred yards but it took me an hour and a half of super-human effort to get the gear back to the car, having to move the load in two halves at 50 yards at a time.

I’ve now sorted my tackle into a lighter version consisting of rucksack (flask & food, tackle plus landing net), small Puma bag (small tackle items), 18 litre bucket (bait, groundbait, mixing tray built in – possibly use as a seat), Korum 3-rod holdall with 2 leger rods, landing net handle, lighter brolly, banksticks, chair. And this will be tested next Tuesday when I return to the water…